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ARGUMENT
editor-at-large for the National Review and writes a regular column on national and
international political issues. The occasion of 0'Sullivan's essay was the execution of Timothy
McVeigh, the convicted bomber of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. As you read,
consider how each of these different contexts helps determine each writer's argument.
DEATH AND JUSTICE
Edward I. Koch
Last December a man named Robert Lee Willie, who had been convicted of i raping and murdering
an 18-year-old woman, was executed in the Louisiana state prison. In a statement issued several
minutes before his death, Mr. Willie said: "Killing people is wrong— It makes no difference whether
it's citizens, countries, or governments. Killing is wrong."Two weeks later in South Carolina, an
admitted killer named Joseph Carl Shaw was put to death for murdering two teenagers. In an appeal
to the governor for clemency, Mr. Shaw wrote: "Killing is wrong when I did it. Killing is wrong
when you do it. I hope you have the courage and moral strength to stop the killing."
It is a curiosity of modern life that we find ourselves being lectured on 2 morality by cold-blooded
killers. Mr. Willie previously had been convicted of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, and
the murders of a Louisiana deputy and a man from Missouri. Mr. Shaw committed another
murder a week before the two for which he was executed, and admitted mutilating the body of the
14-year-old girl he killed. I can't help wondering what prompted these murderers to speak out
against killing as they entered the death-house door. Did their newfound reverence for life stem
from the realization that they were about to lose their own?
Life is indeed precious, and I believe the death penalty helps to affirm 3 this fact. Had the death
penalty been a real possibility in the minds of these murderers, they might well have stayed their
hand. They might have shown moral awareness before their victims died, and not after. Consider the
tragic death of Rosa Velez, who happened to be home when a man named Luis Vera burglarized
her apartment in Brooklyn. "Yeah, I shot her," Vera admitted. "She knew me, and I knew I
wouldn't go to the chair."
During my 22 years in public service, I have heard the pros and cons of capital punishment
expressed with special intensity. As a district leader, councilman, congressman, and mayor, I have
represented constituencies generally thought of as liberal. Because I support the death penalty for
heinous crimes of murder, I have sometimes been the subject of emotional and outraged attacks
by voters who find my position reprehensible or worse. I have listened to their ideas. I have weighed
their objections carefully. I still support the death penalty. The reasons I maintained my position can be
best understood by examining the arguments most frequently heard in opposition.
1. The death penalty is "barbaric." Sometimes opponents of capital punishment horrify with tales of
lingering death on the gallows, of faulty electric chairs, or of agony in the gas chamber. Partly
in response to such protests, several states such as North Carolina and Texas switched to execution by lethal injection. The condemned person is put to death painlessly, without ropes,
voltage, bullets, or gas. Did this answer the objections of death penalty opponents? Of course not.
On June 22,1984, The New York Times published an editorial that sarcastically attacked the new
"hygienic"
method of death by injection, and stated that "execution can never be made humane through
science." So it's not the method that really troubles opponents. It's the death itself they consider
barbaric.
Admittedly capital punishment is not a pleasant topic. However, one 6 does not have to like the
death penalty in order to support it any more than one must like radical surgery, radiation, or
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chemotherapy in order to find necessary these attempts at curing cancer. Ultimately we may
learn how to cure cancer with a simple pill. Unfortunately, that day has not yet arrived. Today we
are faced with the choice of letting the cancer spread or trying to cure it with the methods
available, methods that one day will almost certainly be considered barbaric and would certainly
delay the discovery of an eventual cure. The analogy between cancer and murder is imperfect,
because murder is not the "disease" we are trying to cure. The disease is injustice. We may not
like the death penalty, but it must be available to punish crimes of cold-blooded murder, cases in
which any other form of punishment would be inadequate and, therefore, unjust. If we create a
society in which injustice is not tolerated, incidents of murder—the most flagrant form of
injustice—will diminish.
2. No other major democracy uses the death penalty. No other major democracy—in fact, few other
countries of any description—are plagued by a murder rate such as that in the United States. Fewer
and fewer Americans can remember the days when unlocked doors were the norm and murder was a
rare and terrible offense. In America the murder rate climbed 122 percent between 1963 and 1980.
During that same period, the murder rate in New York City increased by almost 400 percent, and
the statistics are even worse in many other cities. A study at M.I.T. showed that based on 1970
homicide rates a person who lived in a large American city ran a greater risk of being murdered
than an American soldier in World War II ran of being killed in combat. It is not surprising that
the laws of each country differ according to differing conditions and traditions. If other countries
had our murder problem, the cry for capital punishment would be just as loud as it is here. And I
daresay that any other major democracy where 75 percent of the people supported the death
penalty would soon enact it into law.
3. An innocent person might be executed by mistake. Consider the work of Adam Bedau, one of the
most implacable foes of capital punishment in this country. According to Mr. Bedau, it is "false
sentimentality to argue that the death penalty should be abolished because of the abstract possibility
that an innocent person might be executed." He cites a study of the 7,000 executions in this
country from 1893 to 1971, and concludes that the record fails to show that such cases occur. The
main point, however, is this. If government functioned only when the possibility of error didn't
exist, government wouldn't function at all. Human life deserves special protection, and one of the
best ways to guarantee that protection is to assure that convicted murderers do not kill again. Only
the death penalty can accomplish this end. In a recent case in New Jersey, a man named Richard
Biegenwald was freed from prison after serving 18 years for murder; since his release he has been
convicted of committing four murders. A prisoner named Lemuel Smith, who, while serving four
life sentences for murder (plus two life sentences for kidnapping and robbery) in New York's
Green Haven Prison, lured a woman corrections officer into the chaplain's office and strangled
her. He then mutilated and dismembered her body. An additional life sentence for Smith is
meaningless. Because New York has no death penalty statute, Smith has effectively been given a
license to kill.
But the problem of multiple murder is not confined to the nation's penitentiaries. In 1981, 91
police officers were killed in the line of duty in this country. Seven percent of those arrested in the
cases that have been solved had a previous arrest for murder. In New York City in 1976 and 1977,
85 persons arrested for homicide had a previous arrest for murder. Six of these individuals had two
previous arrests for murder, and one had four previous murder arrests. During those two years the
New York police were arresting for murder persons with a previous arrest for murder on the average of one every 8.5 days. This is not surprising when we learn that in 1975, for example, the
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median time served in Massachusetts for homicide was less than two-and-a-half years. In 1976 a
study sponsored by the Twen-tieth Century Fund found that the average time served in the United
States for first-degree murder is ten years. The median time served may be considerably lower.
4.Capital punishment cheapens the value of human life. On the con- 10
trary, it can be easily demonstrated that the death penalty strengthens the
value of human life. If the penalty for rape were lowered, clearly it would
signal a lessened regard for the victims' suffering, humiliation, and per
sonal integrity. It would cheapen their horrible experience, and expose them
to an increased danger of recurrence. When we lower the penalty for murder, it signals a lessened
regard for the value of the victim's life. Some critics of capital punishment, such as columnist Jimmy
Breslin, have suggested that a life sentence is actually a harsher penalty for murder than death.
This is sophistic nonsense. A few killers may decide not to appeal a death sentence, but the
overwhelming majority make every effort to stay alive. It is by exacting the highest penalty for the
taking of human life that we affirm the highest value of human life.
5. The death penalty is applied in a discriminatory manner. This factor no 11
longer seems to be the problem it once was. The appeals process for a con
demned prisoner is lengthy and painstaking. Every effort is made to see that
the verdict and sentence were fairly arrived at. However, assertions of discrim
ination are not an argument for ending the death penalty but for extending it.
It is not justice to exclude everyone from the penalty of the law if a few are found to be so favored.
Justice requires that the law be applied equally to all.
6. Thou shalt not kill. The Bible is our greatest source of moral inspiration. Opponents of the death
penalty frequently cite the sixth of the Ten
Commandments in an attempt to prove that capital punishment is divinely
proscribed. In the original Hebrew, however, the Sixth Commandment
reads, "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder," and the Torah specifies capital
punishment for a variety of offenses. The biblical viewpoint has been up
held by philosophers throughout history. The greatest thinkers of the 19th
century—Kant, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Mill—agreed
that natural law properly authorizes the sovereign to take life in order to
vindicate justice. Only Jeremy Bentham was ambivalent. Washington, Jef
ferson, and Franklin endorsed it. Abraham Lincoln authorized executions
for deserters in wartime. Alexis de Tocqueville, who expressed profound re
spect for American institutions, believed that the death penalty was indis
pensable to the support of social order. The United States Constitution,
widely admired as one of the seminal achievements in the history of humanity, condemns cruel
and inhuman punishment, but does not condemn capital punishment.
7. The death penalty is state-sanctioned murder. This is the defense with n which Messrs. Willie
and Shaw hoped to soften the resolve of those who sentenced them to death. By saying in
effect, "You're no better than I am," the murderer seeks to bring his accusers down to his own
level. It is also a popular argument among opponents of capital punishment, but a transparently false one. Simply put, the state has rights that the private individual does not. In a
democracy, those rights are given to the state by the electorate. The execution of a lawfully
condemned killer is no more an act of murder than is legal imprisonment an act of
kidnapping. If an individual forces a neighbor to pay him money under threat of punishment,
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it's called extortion. If the state does it, it's called taxation. Rights and responsibilities
surrendered by the individual are what give the state its power to govern. This contract is the
foundation of civilization itself.
Everyone wants his or her rights, and will defend them jealously. Not everyone, however,
wants responsibilities, especially the painful responsibilities that come with law enforcement.
Twenty-one years ago a woman named Kitty Genovese was assaulted and murdered on a
street in New York. Dozens of neighbors heard her cries for help but did nothing to assist her.
They didn't even call the police. In such a climate the criminal understandably grows bolder. In
the presence of moral cowardice, he lectures us on our supposed failings and tries to equate his
crimes with our quest for justice.
The death of anyone — even a convicted killer —diminishes us all. But is we are diminished
even more by a justice system that fails to function. It is an illusion to let ourselves believe that
doing away with capital punishment removes the murderer's deed from our conscience. The
rights of society are paramount. When we protect guilty lives, we give up innocent lives in exchange. When opponents of capital punishment say to the state: "I will not let you kill in my
name," they are also saying to murderers: "You can kill in your own name as long as I have an
excuse for not getting involved."
It is hard to imagine anything worse than being murdered while neighbors do nothing. But
something worse exists. When those same neighbors shrink back from justly punishing the
murderer, the victim dies twice.